Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 26 – Russians reacted calmly to the announcement that a Moscow court had liquidated the Helsinki Group given that since they have no rights, there is no reason for human rights defenders to continue to exist. After all, what could they possibly do under the circumstances? Russians ask.
This is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled that provide key insights into what Russians are really thinking about Russia today (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45007/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:
· As of March 1, Russians who want to leave the country by air will have to sign up in advance on the list of “traitors to the Motherland.”
· The Kremlin says that Berlin’s decision to supply tanks to Ukraine doesn’t bode well for the future of German-Russian relations, an optimistic assessment in that it is based on the assumption that those relations have a future.
· Duma deputies, most of whom were mediocre students, are likely going to ban not only the five point scale on which Russian pupils are graded by also the numbers two and three.
· In any normal country, someone who claims he is being attacked by Satanists from 50 countries will be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. In Russia, however, such a person becomes star on state television.
· Russian government outlets gave prominent play to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Eswatini, even though 99.9 percent of Russians have no idea where that is. After all, Putin’s Russia has no other partners on this earth.
· The Duma may soon pass a law making it a criminal offense to “discredit” Wagner PMCs who were recruited from Russian prisons. That’s real progress. After becoming the first country to declare murders and pedophiles heroes, it will then be the first where anyone who continues to call a pedophile a pedophile will be imprisoned.
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